


Ode to Misery

by Hallie_Blue



Series: The Playlist of Yuliya Plisetskaya [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 16 years later, Ace/aro isabella yang, Aromantic Yuri/Yuliya, Demigirl Yuri Plisetsky, Jjbek have kids, Jjbek is married as fuck, Minor mentions of depression and alcohol, Sad but hopeful ending??, This isn't happy at all., Transfeminine demigirl yurio, Yurio is 31, Yurio is Yuliya Plisetskaya now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 08:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9483023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hallie_Blue/pseuds/Hallie_Blue
Summary: At 31, Yuliya Plisetskaya no longer displays the countless gold and silver medals won over a lifetime of competitive skating with pride. They are shoved haphazard to the back of her closet in a dusty old forgotten box that a pair of now worn-out and stained figure skates had once been packaged in. What happened to those skates is anyone's guess, as far as Yuliya knows they are rotting in some landfill in Quebec considering that's where she'd been when she tossed them into a dumpster.





	

 

At 31, Yuliya Plisetskaya no longer displays the countless gold and silver medals won over a lifetime of competitive skating with pride. They are shoved haphazard to the back of her closet in a dusty old forgotten box that a pair of now worn-out and stained figure skates had once been packaged in. What happened to those skates is anyone's guess, as far as Yuliya knows they are rotting in some landfill in Quebec considering that's where she'd been when she tossed them into a dumpster...but she could care less if that isn't true so long as she never has to see them again. 

 

It's been eight years, but so far Yuliya is only growing more sceptical of the phrase ‘time heals all wounds’ rather than actually healing. She stands in her ballet studio watching a bunch of naïve children blindly throwing themselves towards a life of inevitable physical and emotional pain as they stretch themselves physically and mentally beyond their own limits in their attempts to show her a beauty in themselves that they are destroying in the process. 

 

She hates herself a little more with each child who walks into her studio intent on learning ballet and leaves having sold her their soul. Especially since most days she wishes she could go back and tell  _ Yuri Plisetsky  _ those gold medals weren't worth it. 

 

She maneuvers her way skillfully up the stairs to her attic condo in La Cité-Limoilou with such poise no one would suspect the  pain the cold that accompanies January snowfall still sends shooting through her leg after all this time.  It had been a particularly heartbreaking day of making Nikolai Altin cry after refusing to teach him. This was the exact type of situation she had got the condo for: the times when she just couldn't go home and face Nikolai’s Papa and Äke even though they're probably more worried about her mental health than they are angry. 

 

She's barely closed the door when her phone rings and she sees that Rémi Altin is trying to facetime her. Even though she answers, she makes a mental note to ask Otabek who's bright idea it was to give an eight years old an iPhone.

 

Rémi is crying too. Apologizing for wrong doings he and Nikolai didn't commit because he doesn't understand another reason for her saying  _ no  _ to his brother. To be fair that's mostly her own fault for not being able to say it before now. She's tempted to tell Rémi exactly why she said  _ no  _ but thankfully Beka grabs the phone from his oldest son and gives Yuliya  _ The Look.  _ It's the same look he gave her when Rémi's first words turned out to be  _ Fuck _  and  _ Shithead.  _ It was a unique form of fond exasperation reserved for her and her alone.

 

“Well?” Otabek asks, as if she's supposed to magically know how to answer a question she hasn't actually be asked. Which she pretty much does because it's Otabek and he has a way of saying more with his eyebrows than he does with actual words.

 

“I'm protecting him, Beka.” ‘ _ like I wish someone had done for me’  _ isn't spoken but somehow Otabek knows anyway because it's no secret in the figure skating world that  _ Yuri Plisetsky _ had not retired willingly. The career ending performance had been aired on international television after all. A 22 year old  _ Yuri Plisetsky _ had broken  _ his  _ leg into 36 pieces at Skate Canada when a failed attempt at a quad flip had joined forces with an already sprained ankle that  _ Yuri _ had been hiding from Yakov most of the 2024 skating season. 

 

“I don't want him to be like me.”  _ Like me.  _ As in full of so much regret she doesn't know how she gets out of bed most days. The injury of course was mostly to blame for  _ that.  _ If someone had known about the ankle...if  _ Yuri Plisetsky  _ had been less concerned with another gold and more concerned with  _ his _ health…

 

She tries to lock that train of thought back into her mind. What it’s get her is nowhere short of back on the anti-depressants she never actually took even though she probably should have. 

 

After assuring Otabek and his shithead Canadian of a husband that she's not as depressed as she actually is and giving them a brief lecture on why she thinks an eight year old with a smartphone is a bad idea, she actually manages to get them off the phone  _ before  _ she opens a bottle of her favorite Vodka and mixes it with some Bundaberg Ginger Beer. 

 

She doesn't like drinking normally. Between Katsudon pole dancing at the Sochi banquet in 2015 and Otabek talking JJ into the world's ugliest couples tramp stamps, Yuliya has no desire to ever let herself get properly drunk. That said she does drink. She drinks just enough to not care and still stays sober enough to not black out. 

 

A blackout sounds good right now but she has the self-loathing to keep herself from doing the things she wants. She also has the self loathing to drunk-dial Lilia Baranovskaya and tell her in no uncertain terms she's to blame for ruining Yuliya’s...or rather Yuri's skating career. She informs Lilia that she was the unforgiving goddess who's unattainable standard of beauty had found the Ice Tiger of Russia bending backwards until there was no other possible outcome but to break. 

 

Yuliya may be 31 but she feels both like she's an old hag and small child as she sobs to Lilia over the phone. She denies it but she's homesick. Not for Russia exactly, considering just who Yuliya is and was and how most of Russia feels about such things, but she does miss  _ home.  _ Grandpa is especially missed. More than anything, though, she regrets being too injured to fly home for his funeral. She misses Lilia and Yakov despite blaming them for her own failure to comprehend her limits. She misses Mila and Georgi and Viktor and Katsudon. 

 

More than anything she misses the feeling of the ice beneath her. She has never loved any living thing as much as she loved the ice. Now that love is forever lost to time and her own poor judgement so she makes due. 

 

She makes due with Isabella Yang and her insistence on dragging Yuliya to every ladies’ night Quebec City’s bars had to offer. She makes due with Otabek and Jean-Jacques Altin needing her to cook so they don't starve to death or burn their house down. She makes due with their kids Rémi, Nikolai, and Ayzere whom Yuliya would gladly give up her life for and would make them cry before she would let them sell their souls in exchange for a gold medal they same way  _ Yuri Plisetsky  _ once did. 


End file.
